


A Long Time Coming

by mattie24601



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Anti-Sara Lance, Cops AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Far too detailed crime scene investigation, Nora and Damien aren't related, Nyssa/Ava is endgame, Police corruption, Racism, Rare Pairings, featuring corrupt police officers, fic request, police racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28204662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattie24601/pseuds/mattie24601
Summary: Nyssa Raatko is the newest detective at Star City's 27th Police Department. Ava Sharpe doesn't do well meeting new people.Enemies to Lovers Cops AU.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Nyssa al Ghul/Ava Sharpe, Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	A Long Time Coming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rareshipper96](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rareshipper96/gifts).



> This was a fic requested by Rareshipper96, I am very sorry it took this long.
> 
> This fic was beta'd by my wonderful best friend who also kept me sane writing this and I messaged her a lot throughout the process of writing this.
> 
> There are some listed in the tags but I'm putting them here too, some content warnings: Widespread corruption in the police department, Racism, specifically by police officers.
> 
> I couldn't in good conscience write a fic about cops in today's political climate without also talking about the blatant racism and corruption that runs deep in many police departments, I am also only one person so do your own research.
> 
> I did some very ridiculous research for this fic, including the current and former official languages of various countries surrounding the Hindu Kush. Also, I'm a criminal justice major and have taken many evidence and crime scene classes so apologies if the crime scene descriptions are very technical and boring.
> 
> I went through about four different titles for this fic, two were based on songs.

Ava Sharpe has made it a rule to not get too friendly with her colleagues, they’re a distraction from her work. But, now there’s someone new at the precinct, Nyssa Raatko, and the two of them keep butting heads. On everything. Nyssa only transferred over a week ago but they’ve done nothing but snipe at each other.

* * *

“She’s driving me up a wall.” Ava vents to her girlfriend, Sara.

“Why do you even care?” Sara laughs. “You don’t like most of the people you work with, so why is this new detective any different?”

“It’s not that I dislike the people I work with, I just don’t make a habit of getting to know them. But Nyssa, she’s such a know-it-all, of course she doesn’t make it seem like she is, she just is always solving cases that no one else has been able to and she makes it seem like it was so obvious in the first place.” In her ranting Ava doesn’t notice Sara tense at the name of the newest detective at Star City’s 27th precinct.

“Isn’t that a good thing,” Sara says after she recovers. “You guys are supposed to close cases.” When Ava doesn’t respond Sara climbs onto her lap and makes her forget all about the troublesome detective.

* * *

“And Detective Sharpe, you will be pairing up with Detective Raatko for this case.” Captain Bennett says as he’s closing the briefing. Ava knows better than to argue with her superior but that doesn’t mean she’s happy with his choice. They’ve been assigned to a break in at the S.T.A.R. Labs storage facility. S.T.A.R. Labs is one of leaders in the scientific community and whoever broke in stole several prototypes that took years to develop.

By the time they get to the scene the beat cops have already taped it off. Ava starts in one corner of the area outside the lab and Nyssa starts at the other so they can find any evidence left behind outside, before moving to the interior.

“They seem to be well equipped, all of the cameras were strategically turned off, they did not turn them all off at the same time, utilizing blind spots so no one noticed they were there until this morning.”

“So you’ve already ruled out the security team working here last night?” Ava asks, a little more bite in her voice than necessary.

“Yes I have,” Nyssa says as though it’s obvious. “As this is only a storage facility there was only one person watching the cameras last night and if you actually paid attention to the footprints you would see that they are much larger than that of the woman working here last night, and they do not show a pattern that is consistent with a person who was wearing shoes too large for their feet.” Nyssa knows that Ava does not like her and she is used to people not liking her, especially with who her father is.

Ava just huffs at Nyssa’s answer and starts sweeping the interior for hopefully more evidence than they found outside, just the boot prints.

* * *

They don’t find anything else at the scene but there were a few crime scene techs still there when they left. The boot prints give them a place to start though. And going over the security guard’s statement. She didn’t have much to say though, there are 20 cameras that she watches every night and only became aware of the break in when the morning crew came in to do inventory. Now though they have to track down the people who were taking inventory because whoever first got to the scene didn’t think to take any statements from them. Aside from what was missing.

Nyssa and Ava spend the day interviewing witnesses and trying to build up a profile, and filing paperwork.

“Good night, Detective Sharpe,” Nyssa says cordially as she’s heading out, Ava may not like her, but she was raised to be polite.

“Good night,” Ava responds as she grabs her coat from the back of her chair, she’s supposed to meet Sara at the local bar. It’s not too late when they get off so the bar isn’t crowded yet. Ava texts Sara when she gets off so she knows what time to meet since her schedule isn’t super consistent.

It’s been a long week and Ava is so relieved to see her girlfriend, there aren’t that many people she truly likes, Sara and her best friend, Nora, are at the top of that list. They don’t spend much time at the bar, enough to have a few drinks and talk to some of the other regulars they recognize, before going home and Sara helps Ava relieve some of her stress.

The next day she’s _slightly_ less terse with Nyssa as they work the case. They follow up the leads of the morning crew but there’s still not much, they also spend part of the day collecting boot prints from anyone who currently works at the facility and anyone who used to work there and still lives in the city. Of all, almost 70 people that have boots, only 8 of them have the right brand, and only 3 have the right size. Nyssa compares the boot prints from their 3 suspects, while Ava gets alibis from them. One man was out at a movie with his wife, his wife brought in the ticket stubs as proof. Another had been at home, although he had no one to corroborate his story. And the last man, well, they couldn’t find him, his roommate provided his shoes upon questioning, but stated that he hadn’t been around for a few days. None of the prints were close enough to justify a search warrant but given that they were able to verify the first man’s alibi his boots were taken out of the mix.

Over the course of the following week they weren’t able to find much, they were able to track their missing suspect to San Diego, out of their jurisdiction, but Ava was able to contact an old acquaintance, Maggie Sawyer, who lives in National City, a city within the county of San Diego, and she was using her resources down there to keep an eye out for him.

They were getting closer to needing that lead, because there was no way that the robbery was done by one person, the other clearly working the technological aspect, taking out the cameras and telling the person inside where the blindspots were. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on who you ask, their remaining suspect in Star City was pretty much a loner without much in the way of friends or accomplices. Not that they wouldn’t still keep him on their radar but he’s not likely to have done the job.

One Thursday night, several weeks into the case, Ava and Nyssa ended up needing to stay late at the precinct so Ava texts Sara to let her know, and she, very sweetly, brings Ava coffee to help her make it through the night. That night was the night that her tentative friendship built with Nyssa started to crumble.

As Sara is heading out she notices Ava’s partner for this case. She vaguely remembers Ava mentioning that the new detective’s name was Nyssa but assumed that it likely wasn’t her ex and when she wasn’t brought up again forgot she even existed.

“Nyssa?” The woman in question looks up at the mention of her name.

“Sara?” Nyssa is up and cautiously walking over to her ex, they didn’t split on the best terms but Sara was also her closest friend in Afghanistan. “Anti huna?” She defaults to her native Arabic in her confusion. Her father was a traditionalist and insisted that she learn Arabic as his family had for generations, refusing to give it up in favor of the now official Pashto.

“Yeah, I’m here. I grew up here so I moved back. What are you doing here?”

“I moved after my father passed. I did not realize that you were also living here.”

“Well I am.” Their standoff ends when Sara goes over and makes more of a show than strictly necessary when kissing Ava goodbye.

“What was that?” Ava questions her partner once her girlfriend is gone, slightly bewildered at what just happened.

“Sara briefly lived in Afghanistan for a Doctors Without Borders program, you are aware of that, correct?” Nyssa continues when Ava nods, aware of Sara’s previous work in the Middle East. “One night she had gotten into a confrontation with a local leader and was badly injured, I was lucky to find her and I helped her recover. As she healed we began a relationship, but it ended after eight months when she cheated on me with another doctor in the program. She came back to the US not long after and we did not keep in touch so I lost track of her. Please be careful, some people don’t change.”

“I don’t need you to tell me about my girlfriend. We’ve been together for a year and a half, I would know if she was hiding something, please stay out of my life.”

“Time means nothing if the person you are with is good at keeping secrets, Ava.”

“Like I said, stay out of my life.”

* * *

Things stayed pretty frosty between the two of them after that. Ava fully trusts Sara, especially over Nyssa, who she has only known for two months. They worked the case together because they had to but didn’t speak to each other more than strictly necessary to get their work done. Ava would have preferred to switch partners but she didn’t think that Captain Bennett would let her do that because she was having a difference of opinion with her current partner on a personal matter.

Their case was wrapping up anyway, the third guy’s roommate had lied for him as he fled down south with the equipment. Maggie was able to use her contacts with SDPD to apprehend him, especially since he still had the stolen products. They shipped him back with the devices so SCPD could start to process his trial. Along with his roommate, they’re both looking at quite a bit of time, between the robbery, fleeing the state, and aiding and abetting the runaway.

“I could have told you it was him. Little shit’s always causing trouble,” Officer Damein Darhk comments offhandedly.

“There’s nothing on his record.” Ava says, a little confused flipping through his file again to see if she missed anything.

“That’s because he’s never been caught but just look at him, his kind are always getting into trouble.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Officer.” Officer Darhk may be taller than Ava but she still outranks him and can easily look down on him.

“I’m just saying there are some people that are inherently more criminal. Look, believe me or don’t but he was always at the top of my suspect list.”

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t on the case then,” Ava tells him.

Ava is grateful that she so rarely works with Officer Darhk, this isn’t the first time he’s said something like this and she’s sure it won’t be the last. He’s such a racist asshole but the higher ups never want to believe anything bad about their officers, or they’re part of the problem as well. Incidents like this keep happening and she’s been thinking of leaving the force lately because of it, she’s not sure that she can continue to work with the corrupt side of it. Ava’s not sure that she can fix it from the inside so she wants to leave and work somewhere she can help fix it.

Ava goes to meet Sara at the local bar after her shift, she really just wants to blow off some steam after the day she’s had. Ava doesn’t see Sara when she first gets to the bar so she orders a beer and sits at a table waiting for her girlfriend. As the night progresses Sara still doesn’t show up and after 3 hours Ava finally gives up and goes home. Today wouldn’t be the first time Sara got stuck at work and forgot to tell Ava that she wouldn’t be able to meet up with her. So when she gets home and all the lights are off she assumes that that’s the reason. Or that her girlfriend had a long shift at the hospital and just passed out when she got home forgetting about their plans. And then she sees the reason Sara didn’t show up at the bar, she’s too busy having sex with her “just friend” from work. Ava sees the woman’s red hair in _her_ bedroom and immediately leaves to spend the night with her friend, Nora, after slamming the door to their apartment, hard. There are hundreds of texts and missed calls from Sara in the morning but she deletes them all without reading or listening to any of them.

“You’re going to need to talk to her eventually,” Nora tries to reason with her, “she’s still at your place, she moved in with you.”

“I’ll ask Zari to talk to her,” Zari Tomaz was more Sara’s friend than hers but she would be able to get the other woman out of her apartment. “I think this whole break up would go a lot smoother if I don’t have to talk to Sara because I’ll probably just yell at her.”

“Not that she doesn’t deserve it,” Nora comments under her breath before speaking up, “So are you just planning on living here until Zari gets Sara out? Not that I don’t love having you here.”

“If you don’t mind, it should only be a couple more days.”

* * *

If Ava is slightly more closed off than normal in the following days, she’s pretty sure it’s justified, it’s not like she was super open anyway. Most of their cases are pretty open and shut so she buries herself in whatever open case she can find and works it with whatever other detective is assigned to it. For the most part after her initial case with Nyssa they haven’t really been assigned together and Ava is totally okay with that. 

Since Ava isn’t really all that good at making friends with people and as such she’s never really gone through a break up either. She’s not really sure how to deal with it so she just throws herself into her work to the point it worries her friends and coworkers.

Ava spends most of her nights alone in her apartment, not really doing anything. She’ll occasionally watch a movie, but now that she’s not in a relationship she doesn’t really remember what she did before. She probably watched TV after her shifts, but most of the shows she’s watching now are shows she watched with Sara and it seems wrong to watch them alone. She doesn’t really want to watch anything new so she settles on her favorite show from college to rewatch.

“Detective Sharpe, you are not okay.” Nyssa tells her bluntly a few weeks after her break up.

“I thought I told you to stay out of my personal life.”

“You did, but now your personal life is interfering with your work life, which includes me. And we are supposed to be working this case together.”

“Well, since you seem to be so good at solving cases, why don’t you just do your work on the case, I’ll do mine and we’ll put it together and we won’t have to work together,” Ava snaps at her, yes she realizes it’s not Nyssa’s fault that she was correct in Sara possibly cheating on her, but that doesn’t mean she has to like the other woman. And maybe she’s projecting her own anger about what happened onto Nyssa because of her warning all those months ago.

“You do not have to like me, but you do need to work with me. You can go back to ignoring me once this case is over, but we still have to work together regardless of your break up,” Nyssa pauses before continuing. “If you ever want to talk, I have been where you are before.”

Ava tenses ready to tell Nyssa off for meddling again before collapsing in defeat, “That would be nice actually.”

* * *

“Wait, Officer Darhk has said those things to you too?” Ava asks Nyssa, shocked. They’re getting drinks and after venting about all the ways Sara has hurt them, they’ve moved on to work. She knows that Damien Darhk is pretty open with his racism but usually he at least waits until he sees what other people’s stances are first, and while Ava has made her stance very clear she is also very white whereas Nyssa is very much...not. “I’ve been thinking of quitting,” Ava admits quietly. She’s never said that to anybody before, not even Nora. “I don’t think I can stop people like Darhk from the inside, there are too many of them and they go too high up.”

“If you did leave, I would leave with you,” Nyssa tells her earnestly. “I have also been wanting to quit, but I did not want to do it alone.” Nyssa answers her next question before she even asks it. “Especially being so new to being a detective. I do not know how long you have been a detective but I was only recently promoted and the officers seem to be getting worse in their remarks.”

“I’m sorry...” Ava wants to say more, she wants to apologize for everything, treating Nyssa poorly after her advice about Sara, which ended up being true, not even bothering to get to know her when they were assigned to a case, and just in general being kind of a jerk to her. “For everything.” She couldn’t figure out a better way to say everything she wants to. Needs to.

“Thank you.”

“Do you, um, want to, uh, get out of here?” Ava asks, stumbling over her words. “I’m not looking for anything, but my apartment is quieter, we can plan our daring escape,” Ava giggles a little bit at what she’s saying, she may be a little bit drunk.

“I do not know how much we would accomplish with you in this state.”

“Then we can just hang out, please,” Normally Ava would be above begging, but normally she is in charge of all her faculties.

“Okay, Sadiqti.”

“That's pretty. What does it mean?”

“My friend.”

“Aww, you think of me as a friend. I’m sorry,” Ava says again, Nora is really her only friend and she doesn’t really think she’s been nice enough to Nyssa for her to consider her a friend.

“Thank you. Again. Let us go, you do not need anymore alcohol tonight.”

* * *

In the following days Nyssa and Ava meet, mostly in Ava’s apartment, to plan their leave from the Star City Police Department and where to go once they do quit and the best way to help. Obviously they’re just two women and they aren’t going to be able to end the systematic racism on their own but they’re more than willing to find people who are already fighting and help them.

“Sara’s sister, Laurel, started a pro-bono legal office, specifically to help people of color, that might be a good place to start,” Ava volunteers. Nyssa comes over and looks over Ava’s shoulder at the site she has up.

“We should draft an email to them and see what work they need done.” Nyssa moves around and sits down next to Ava at the table and they start brainstorming the best way to write the email. It takes them several hours, far longer than either of them thought it would, but they have a draft they’re happy with.

* * *

“Officer Darhk, you’ve had this man in custody for over 48 hours, you were supposed to let him go hours ago,” Ava says, looking over the paperwork for the young man currently in their interrogation room.

“Oh, that paperwork is incorrect, he’s only been here 40 hours,” he answers smoothly, clearly trying to make her think the, very clearly written numbers, are incorrect.

“Unless you have evidence that he is a suspect you need to release him. Maybe Detective Ivo ‘misses’ your mistakes on intake forms, but I don’t, and I don’t see any evidence.”

“It’s clear he did it, I just need 8 more hours and I can prove it, just look at him, he’s guilty, his kind always are.”

“If you did not find anything when you arrested him, or in the past two days, you will not now. Release this young man, you cannot keep someone simply because you do not like their race.” Nyssa says quietly, slowly, and terrifying, entering the interrogation room after watching the interaction from outside.

* * *

Of course nothing happens when they report Darhk, and combined with everything else that’s the last straw for both Ava and Nyssa. They turn in their resignation letters within two hours of each other. They don’t really have a back-up plan yet besides volunteering at Laurel’s office, and really two ex-cops from one of the country’s most corrupt police departments are pretty good defense attorneys. They know who all the corrupt officers are, or at least most of them, and know all the tricks they use to get innocent people on trial.

* * *

Once they quit and are working with Laurel they are somehow spending more time with each other than they were before. They alternate spending time at each other’s apartment going over the cases, commenting on different officers they had worked with in the past and different tactics they had used.

“Six months ago, I hated you,” Ava comments one night when they’re at her apartment trading case folders.

“I know. You did not do a good job hiding it.”

“I know I’ve apologized before, but I really am sorry, for how I treated you, especially after you told me about your experience with Sara.”

“Thank you. I think, I know, you are my only friend here. Thank you for no longer hating me,” Nyssa says with a small smile.

“We should change that, I don’t have many friends either, but Nora is my best friend, I think you two would get along.”

“I would appreciate that,” Nyssa smiles at her again and Ava wants to keep talking to get Nyssa to smile again, it doesn’t happen very often and Ava likes being the one that makes it happen, but Nyssa has already gone back to reading the case.

_To: Nora  
Do you want to get breakfast  
with me and Nyssa this weekend?  
She doesn’t have many friends  
and I think you would like her._

_From: Nora  
Sounds fun. Sunday morning?_

* * *

They couldn’t actually agree on a breakfast restaurant to go to so they ended up at SC Jitters for coffee. Nora gives Ava a _look_ when she offers to order everyone’s coffee, a look that says they’ll be having a conversation about this later. They’ve been spending a lot of time together, especially late at night or early in the morning, it’s not weird that Ava knows Nyssa’s coffee order.

Nora and Nyssa are already talking at the table when Ava goes over with two of the coffees and sets them in front of her two friends and walks back to the counter to get hers and discovers that somebody else took it. She debates whether it’s worth it or not to get another and decides against it, she doesn’t really want to make more work for the baristas on a busy morning, besides the whole outing was to get Nyssa and Nora to meet, she’ll just make coffee when she goes home later.

“Hey, where’s your coffee?” Nora asks when she returns to the table for a second time.

“Some idiot didn’t check to make sure it was theirs and took mine. It’s fine though, they’re busy,” Nyssa looks like she’s ready to fight somebody over Ava’s missing coffee so she changes the topic. “You guys seem like you’re getting along.”

“Yeah, we found some books in common. And then got distracted talking about them so that’s kind of where we stopped.”

Nyssa and Nora largely ignore her during their outing once Nora tells Nyssa that Ava only goes to book club for the wine. They lose themselves in book conversation for several hours and Ava is content to just watch them, occasionally stealing sips of Nyssa’s drink. It wouldn’t be the first time and Nyssa barely bats an eye at it, but Nora gives her the look again and Ava knows she’s never going to hear the end of it.

* * *

The first time they kiss it’s really not for the right reason. They’re at a New Year’s Eve party that Nora is hosting, so it’s really just the three of them, Nora’s boyfriend Ray, Ray’s best friend Nate, and _his_ girlfriend Amaya. Everyone else is kissing and they’ve been spending a lot of time together with a lot of thinly veiled flirting. Ava may have developed the tiniest crush on her friend, but she knows Nyssa doesn’t feel the same way, they’re just following tradition. Until Nyssa doesn’t pull back first. Until Nyssa leans in and tangles a hand in Ava’s hair. Until they end up leaving a few minutes later and getting a cab back to Ava’s place after apologizing to Nora several times. 

After New Year they go on a real date, it’s not much different from most of the other times they’ve hung out together. It feels like there should be this shift in their relationship with each other, but there isn’t, they kiss more, but that’s really the only difference.

* * *

“Ana ooHebuki,” Nyssa breathes out one night, Ava’s sure Nyssa doesn’t even realize she’s speaking Arabic, Nyssa’s been teaching her Arabic but she doesn’t know what Nyssa said.

“What does that mean?”

Nyssa hesitates, long enough that Ava doesn’t think she’s going to answer, “I love you,” Nyssa says quietly.

Ava tries to repeat it back to her, but she knows it’s way off when Nyssa laughs, Nyssa laughs a lot with her and Ava loves it every time. They go back and forth, Nyssa saying it correctly and Ava butchering the pronunciation but they’re laughing.

“I love you,” Ava says in English, once she realizes that she hasn’t actually said it. Because she does, she loves Nyssa.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest one-shot I have ever written, and one of my longest finished fics period.


End file.
